Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Introducing NatureTravelers.com

Well, I've been working on this project for months, and the timing got out of whack due to the unplanned events in our lives this year. So, it's still not complete, but we wanted to get it out there for our loyal readers to check out.

We wanted a better way to share both the nature-focused travels we've enjoyed throughout the U.S. the last dozen years, the nature-focused international travels we've done, and our future nature-focused travels wherever they may be.

It took a lot of time to find a domain name/website name that we felt portrayed what we wanted. Options were limited, but the best part of our travels revolve around the nature we are so passionate about, so when NatureTravelers.com was available, we jumped on it.

Then we worked on a logo which we had professionally designed by The Logo Company. We supplied an idea and some starting logos and after a few iterations, we approved the logo above which we are thrilled with.

The website itself was set up by Darcie at Wonderfully Cheap Websites using the Weebly platform. I've been teaching myself so I can add pages and make modifications and tweaks as we go along.

This new website is a "responsive" site, so it works with all devices, big laptops, small laptops, tablets, and phones. And I can easily add photo galleries, slideshows, and more. The photos on most of the pages can be enlarged with a click.

The exception to that last statement is for the USA Journal. It was going to take way too much time to recreate all of those blog posts from our past years in the new format, so I just stripped out the some of the irrelevant information and brought many of the best posts (especially those from National Parks) over from the RV-Dreams Journal. BUT with the addition of an over-abundance of categories on the sidebar, they are much easier to search and I like the format even if you can't enlarge a photo. Of course, with 2018 and going forward, any posts will be under the new format.

Speaking of the new format, I just completed all the daily entries for our 2016 Galapagos Islands trip, so those are now up on the new website.

And soon, I'll have something similar for our 2015 Costa Rica trip and our 2011 South Africa trip - it's a LOT of work, but it'll be worth it. In the meantime, there are photo galleries already in place for both of those adventures. And then we'll have Iceland in 2018.

Now, this is a photo-intensive website with quite a few videos as well. So, it may be slow to load (especially the videos) for many in our bandwidth-limited RVing audience. That's one of the reasons we've never upgraded RV-Dreams.com or the Journal, but this is a whole different ballgame, and most that find this site will likely have plenty of internet speed and bandwidth.

We will continue posting to the RV-Dreams Journal for reports of our life on the road, but for really special places that have broad appeal where we have lots of photos (and for our Non-RVing travels), we'll likely post those entries on NatureTravelers.com and link to those posts from the Journal.

In addition, we have a Nature Travelers Facebook page and Twitter page (@NatureTrav). There are Facebook and Twitter icons at the top and bottom of the website.

So, what are we planning to do with this new website? Good question.

Originally, it was going to be a place that allows us to share our non-RVing travels and, perhaps, a platform where we could offer a few ebooks based on those travels .... something like "NatureTravelers.com Presents ..... 15 Days in The Galapagos Islands". That's still a goal. But now we're seeing more and more potential, so we're just going to see where it goes.

We still have a lot of work ahead, and I had hoped we'd be further along in what we've been calling a "transition year", but we'll get it done to my satisfaction eventually, and at the same time, we'll continue to enjoy our RV travels into the foreseeable future.

As always, thanks so much for your support, and we hope you enjoy our new website.

Comments

I'm very excited about the new website. I have enjoyed you current website and photos for years and can not wait for the new site to take off. I'm really excited about your Oregon and Washington plans and can't wait for the photos.

The site design is modern, looks fresh. There are questions about the content, specifically whether there will be for example a selection of the best places to rally, or the top most dangerous places for hikers like here https://bestoutdooritems.com/.
Also, do you need an editor for a blog?